Baghdad church is bittersweet sanctuary

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The baby-blue metal gate stays closed most of the time. The world outside is a vastly different place.

The gate separates the bustling streets of Keradah, one of Baghdad's livelier neighborhoods, from the oasis of St. Hannah Church and Orphanage, where large balconies overlook a lush green lawn and a flower garden of roses and lilies.

Inside the small, simple Chaldean Catholic church, wooden pews offer serenity to anyone who wants to come in and say a prayer. Beyond the gate lies a menacing city, where streets can turn treacherous in an instant, forever changing lives.

A car bomb killed two Iraqi Army soldiers in Keradah just last week. The neighborhood, with one of Baghdad's busiest shopping districts, has been targeted by insurgents.

Sister Pauline Hannah Jummah walks to the gate with great trepidation.

"Every day, I get bad news," she said.

She opened the gate once to a man who looked into her eyes and said: "I've lost everything." A suicide car bomber in Mosul had killed his wife and two daughters.

He left Jummah his surviving two daughters, Atra, 13, and Shamiran, 6. He did not have the means to take care of them.

Jummah accepted the two girls and closed the gate behind her.

Recently, she heard that familiar, desperate knock again. The rattle of sheet metal travels well through the garden.

It was another man who lost his wife in a bombing incident. He wanted to leave his 3-year-old child.

"I looked at the baby and told the father, "She's like the moon but I can't take her in," Jummah said. Her words went against everything her devotion to God was telling her to do. "I can't take in such a small baby. We don't have the facilities here."

Jummah's face is only now starting to show the wear of her 75 years. Until recently, she had been healthy and vigorous. Now, the doctors have told her she has cancer.

She knows her time is starting to run out. She fears she will die with her beloved homeland in turmoil.

The gentle woman runs this sanctuary in the middle of Baghdad, a throwback for many older Baghdadis who fondly recall their own lives being as peaceful as it is here inside the blue gate.

Here, Jummah houses unwanted children, some whose parents have been felled by bullets and bombs; others who were simply abandoned by men and women who could no longer cope in the war-weary Iraq that lies outside the gate.

"God gave freedom to his people, but the people became bad," she said. "This is the worst I have seen my Iraq. Innocent people are paying with blood."

Under Saddam Hussein, she said, Iraqis perished but the culture of violence did not seep into every crevice of society.

"The violence now is so random. Not like before when it was politically targeted," she said. "I have never seen anyone cut off someone's head. Now they show it on videos."

The war, the insurgency, Jummah said, has scarred the nation forever.

"I saw a video of a suicide bomber blow himself up," she said, a tear welling in her eye. "Before he died, he yelled, 'Allahu Akbar!' [God is great] Which God is he talking about? The right to kill people is not religion."

Jummah sat quietly in the entrance to the main building of the church compound. The speckled terrazzo floors cooled the room; there would be no electricity again for another three hours.

Surrounded by images of Christ and the Virgin Mary, Jummah spends her days quietly in prayer and taking care of a handful of Baghdad's abandoned children.

A warm breeze swirled through the sanctuary. The quietness of midafternoon descended on Jummah's world.

And then, the silence was shattered yet again by that familiar rat-a-tat on the gate. Jummah rose from her chair slowly, ambling toward the blue gate one more time, not knowing who would be waiting on the other side.

Moni Basu writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. E-mail: mbasu@ajc.com